Scott Simmerman is an organizational development facilitator and, at 78, I thought I would visually update my professional credentials.

Who Is Dr. Scott Simmerman? He’s the Organizational Development Practitioner Behind Square Wheels^® and Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine

Some organizational-development professionals lead with a theory. Dr. Scott Simmerman leads with an image: a wagon rolling on Square Wheels, people straining to push it forward, and round wheels already in the wagon, just not being used.

The image is simple, memorable, and disarmingly accurate. It captures a familiar workplace experience: capable people working hard inside systems, processes, habits, and assumptions that make their work harder than it needs to be. For more than four decades, Scott Simmerman has built a career around helping people recognize those obstacles, having more productive conversations about them, and taking practical action to improve performance.

Scott J. Simmerman, Ph.D., CPF, CPT

Scott is an organizational-development consultant, facilitator, trainer, author, speaker, and learning-tool designer. More than that, he is a practitioner who has consistently translated complicated ideas about behavior, engagement, teamwork, and organizational improvement into accessible tools that people can actually use.

A Career Built Around People and Performance

Dr. Scott J. Simmerman, Ph.D., is the founder and long-time managing partner of Performance Management Company, which he has operated since 1984. With doctoral training in behavioral neurophysiology / psychology, experience as a college professor, and a career devoted to consulting, facilitation, and learning designnstarting in 1978, he has focused on a central practical question:

How can organizations make it easier for people to do good work?

That question has guided decades of work with managers, consultants, facilitators, trainers, and organizations around the world and hundreds of published articles. Scott is a Certified Professional Facilitator (IAF) and a Certified Professional Trainer (IAPPD) and an experienced presenter whose concepts have been shared internationally in 49 countries. His work brings behavioral science into direct contact with workplace reality: unclear priorities, cumbersome processes, poor coordination, avoidable competition, low employee involvement, and changes that never quite become new habits.

The challenge is rarely a shortage of intelligent people or good intentions. More often, people need a useful tools and processes to identify what is getting in the way, speak honestly without blaming one another, and decide together what to improve. That is the practical territory in which Scott’s tools operate elegantly.

The “Square Wheels Guy”

Scott is widely known for creating the above Square Wheels^® One and dozens of other illustrations and visual-metaphor tools for organizational development and personal growth. The familiar Square Wheels One image (above) is not merely a cartoon. It is a structured conversational tool that gives people permission to discuss the realities of work in a way that is candid, constructive, and non-defensive.

The metaphor is immediately recognizable. The Square Wheels on the wagon represent the systems, procedures, practices, assumptions, and barriers that create drag. The paradox is that they work, but they do not work smoothly. The round wheels represent potential tangible improvements — often ideas, capabilities, or resources that are already in the wagon but ignored, inaccessible, under-supported, or not yet prioritized.

In a typical Square Wheels engagement process, participants:

• Look at a shared image and describe what they see and identify the themes
• Identify specific “Square Wheels” that create friction, delay, frustration, or wasted effort
• Surface “round wheels”—ideas, resources, practices, or solutions that could help
• Prioritize a practical improvement process for implementing change, rather than merely collecting complaints
• Assign ownership and move toward action and celebrate the successes.

This sequence is the point. The goal is not simply to generate energy, laughter, recognition, or a long list of frustrations. The goal is to create shared understanding, discussions of issues and opportunities, and the selection of a next step or steps, all with the goal of making work roll more smoothly.

Since beginning development of the Square Wheels tools in 1993, Scott has created an extensive collection of more than 300 illustrations, metaphors and supporting materials. The tools have been used in discussions about employee engagement, teamwork, innovation, communication, leadership, change, customer service, strategic planning, and workplace improvement. And they have great implications for personal growth and change.

The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine: Learning by Doing

Dr. Simmerman’s contribution extends far beyond a single Square Wheels visual metaphor. He is the original designer and an active, long-term developer of The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, a flagship experiential team-building simulation from Performance Management Company.

For more than 30 years, Scott has continued to improve the game, its materials, its formats, and the ways it can be debriefed and applied to real organizational collaboration issues. The game is used globally by major corporations and a number of independent consulting and training companies. His role has not been limited to having an idea decades ago. It has included sustained attention to the design, delivery, refinement, user support, and learning impact of the experience, which continues even today.

The simulation places teams in a challenging, engaging environment in which they must make decisions about routes, resources, communication, and coordination in pursuit of a shared objective: to mine as much gold as WE can. It deliberately reveals the tension between narrow team competition and collective organizational success. You can read more about Dutchman here. 

Participants experience — and not just hear about — the negative consequences of:

• Competing with other groups rather than collaborating across boundaries
• Withholding information or failing to communicate clearly in trying to “win”
• Treating limited resources as something to protect rather than manage collectively
• Optimizing one team’s results at the expense of the larger system
• Losing sight of shared goals, alignment, and strategic cooperation

The value comes from the structured debrief. A powerful and engaging debriefing helps participants connect what happened in the simulation to what happens in their own organization: competition between teams, isolated silo behavior, departmental rivalry, misaligned incentives, resource conflicts, leadership choices, communication patterns, and opportunities for better collaboration.

The highly interactive program can be used with small groups or very much larger audiences, from 10 to 500, making it a flexible learning vehicle for team-development sessions, leadership programs, strategy discussions, off-sites, and organizational events. Its playful format makes the experience memorable; its carefully designed reflection process makes the learning transferable.

How the Two Tools Align, Purposely 

Square Wheels® and The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine use different formats, but they reflect the same core philosophy: people learn more deeply when they are actively involved in making sense of an experience and applying that insight to their own work.

In other words, Square Wheels helps people see and name what is slowing their work down and their round wheels can represent best practices or innovative ideas to try. The process of working with the images is to define new considered alternatives as well as to create some cognitive dissonance between the way things are and the possibilities. Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine lets people experience the behavioral choices that either improve or impair collective performance. Both approaches are designed to engage people rather than lecture at them. Both are designed for interactive discussions and choices about what might be done differently.

That alignment is central to Scott’s work with organizational improvement. He designs learning experiences that create involvement, generate insight, and encourage people to make better choices together with their considered alternatives to current realities.

Supervisors: The Daily Lever of Engagement

A major focus of Scott’s current thinking is the strengthening the skills of supervisors, because supervisors have direct, daily influence on how employees experience the workplace. They shape whether people are listened to, whether ideas are surfaced, whether problems are addressed constructively, and whether improvement feels possible.

This is not an argument that supervisors must have all the answers. It is an argument that they need better ways to involve the people doing the work.

Scott’s vision is for supervisors to use Square Wheels as a short, practical, regular facilitation process with their teams, with followup to generate implementation and support for continuous continuous improvement.

Rather than becoming “talking managers” who announce solutions, supervisors can become co-creators of traction: people who ask good questions, draw out useful observations, help the group distinguish real barriers from surface complaints, prioritize ideas, and build follow-through. These are simple skills.

(See this blog as an example of how to involve workers in using AI, for example.)

A supervisor can use the Square Wheels metaphor to ask:

• What is making it hard for us to do our best work?
• Which issues are within our influence to improve?
• What “round wheels” already exist but are not being used well?
• What ideas would make the work smoother for customers, colleagues, and the team?
• What one improvement should we test, who will own it, and when will we review the result?

Used well, this approach develops essential supervisory capabilities:

• Active listening and visible respect for employee experience
• Story ASKING rather than story telling to generate active engagement and participation
• Facilitation rather than one-way direction
• Clearer communication about work processes and priorities
• Inclusive problem solving that makes room for quieter voices
• Better prioritization of improvement opportunities
• Shared ownership and accountability for action
• A more constructive response to resistance, frustration, and change

The aim is practical workplace engagement. Employees are more likely to become involved when they can see that their observations matter, their ideas are heard, and the group is willing to act on what it learns. Scott believes that the Square Wheels metaphors provide an approachable method for turning general dissatisfaction into constructive, visible, team-owned opportunities for improvement.

A Practical Philosophy of Facilitation

At the center of Scott Simmerman’s work is a belief that people closest to the work often see both the problems and the possibilities. This is confirmed by his decades of experiences in working with people in organizations. Effective facilitation does not begin with the consultant, executive, or supervisor announcing the answer. It begins by creating conditions in which participants can describe their experience, think together, and claim ownership of a useful response.

That approach is reflected in the way Square Wheels is designed to be used. A facilitator can ask questions such as:

• What does this image make easier to say than a conventional problem-solving meeting would?
• Where are we working harder than necessary?
• Which barriers are systemic rather than simply irritating?
• What resources or better practices already exist but are underused?
• What small experiment could we try in the next 30 days?

These are not abstract questions. They move a team from vague dissatisfaction toward clearer observation, shared diagnosis, practical experimentation, and accountability.

Scott’s approach also carries an important caution for anyone who designs meetings, workshops, or team-building programs: participation is not the same as progress. A session becomes valuable when people leave with a more useful understanding of the issue, a realistic commitment to try to do things differently, and a way to learn from what happens next.

Focus Areas and Skills

Dr. Simmerman’s work brings together several complementary capabilities:

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Dr. Scott Simmerman?

Dr. Scott J. Simmerman, Ph.D., is an organizational-development consultant, facilitator, trainer, author, and learning-tool designer. He founded and has managed Performance Management Company since 1984. He is best known for creating the Square Wheels® organizational-development tools and designing The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine team-building simulation. His LinkedIn profile is here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottsimmerman/

What is Dr. Simmerman’s professional focus?

His work focuses on employee engagement, organizational improvement, teamwork, collaboration, leadership and supervisory effectiveness, facilitation, communication, innovation, and practical performance improvement. His emphasis is on helping people see workplace barriers clearly and become involved in improving them. He develops powerful tools others can use built on simple models about people and performance.

What are Square Wheels^®?

Square Wheels^® are visual metaphors and facilitated discussion tools that help people talk about “how things really work.” Square wheels symbolize the processes, habits, systems, and assumptions that make work difficult. Round wheels represent practical ideas and resources that can improve the way work is done. Square Wheels are a totally unique and extremely effective conversational tool in the global marketplace. Scott is all about collaborating to support the broader use of these tools.

Are Square Wheels® simply cartoons or icebreakers?

No. The illustrations are intended to be a serious, accessible entry point into conversations about work, performance, and improvement. They can make difficult issues safer to discuss, but their value depends on facilitation, prioritization, action, and follow-through. They are very memorable as well as actionable in creating cognitive dissonance around how things really work.

How do Square Wheels® support employee engagement?

Involvement with the images and metaphors give employees a shared language for identifying obstacles and suggesting improvements. When leaders and supervisors use the process well, employees can see their experience acknowledged, their ideas collected, and their contributions connected to visible action.

What is The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine?

It is an experiential team-building simulation designed by Dr. Simmerman. Teams make decisions about routes, resources, coordination, and communication while working toward a collective outcome. Many see it as the best team building simulation in the world focused on collaboration and organizational alignment. The activity creates a memorable way to explore teamwork, leadership, collaboration, alignment, strategic planning, and the organizational costs of siloed competition and is sold globally.

Why is Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine more than a game?

The activity is designed around a structured debrief that connects participants’ choices in the simulation to their workplace behavior. The learning comes from examining what happened, why it happened, and what the group will do differently afterward and not merely from playing the game. It is an excuse to do a debriefing around considered alternatives.

How are Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine and Square Wheels® related?

They use different methods but pursue the same outcome: active involvement in organizational learning, reflection on issues and opportunities and for implementing improvement ideas. Square Wheels helps people identify workplace friction and potential solutions; Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine helps people experience the importance of collaboration, communication, alignment, and collective performance.

What makes these tools useful for supervisors?

Supervisors influence the day-to-day experience of work. Square Wheels gives them a practical structure for listening, facilitating discussion, collecting ideas, involving employees, setting priorities, and tracking follow-through. It helps shift the supervisor’s role from simply directing work to enabling productive team problem solving.

Do supervisors need to be expert facilitators to use Square Wheels®?

No. The tools are designed to make facilitation more accessible. Supervisors do need to be willing to ask open questions, listen carefully, avoid rushing to prescribe every answer, and help the group move toward a clear next action. The images are now supported by simple-to-use AI tools for capturing ideas and generating alternatives.

What types of organizations can use these tools?

The tools can be adapted for businesses, public-sector organizations, nonprofit groups, healthcare settings, educational institutions, operational teams, leadership groups, remote or hybrid teams, and consultant-led workshops. Their adaptability comes from the fact that every organization has processes, relationships, and performance issues worth examining.

What is the central message of Dr. Simmerman’s work?

People should not have to keep pushing on Square Wheels when better ways of working are already within reach. Good organizational development and active involvement help people see the friction, involve those closest to the work, surface practical round wheels, and build ownership for meaningful change.

The Bottom Line

Dr. Scott Simmerman is best understood as an experienced organizational-development practitioner who has made improvement easier to see, easier to discuss, and easier to begin. Through Performance Management Company, Square Wheels®, The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, supervisor-development ideas, and decades of facilitation and presentation work, he has helped turn the often-complicated fields of engagement, teamwork, and organizational change into practical conversations and usable action.

His tools are engaging because they involve people. Their value is deeper than their simplicity: they help groups see how work really happens, recognize the consequences of their choices, and create better ways to move forward together.

His enduring message is straightforward: people should not have to keep pushing square wheels when better ways of working are already within reach.

Perplexity’s editorial note: This overview draws on biographical and program information published by Performance Management Company and on attached documents which describes the Square Wheels process as guided discovery: use a shared visual metaphor to surface workplace friction, identify viable “round wheels,” prioritize action, and build ownership for change.

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For the FUN of It!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools.
Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant who is trying to retire!! He now lives in Cuenca, Ecuador.

You can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com
Learn more about Scott at his LinkedIn site.

Note that I often use Perplexity AI to help research and generate ideas for my posts.

Square Wheels® are a registered trademark of Simmulations, LLC
and images have been copyrighted since 1993,

© Simmulations, LLC 1993 – 2026

Note: Please do not take my images and think about using them. It can generate a whole heap of problems given international copyright law and trademark law. Read this article for more information.

What I’m About:

My Square Wheels blog and website exist to help leaders, trainers, and facilitators make work smoother, more engaging, and more human. I focus on practical tools for process improvement, organizational change, and workplace collaboration that spark insight and deliver measurable results.

And I am convinced, after 30+ years of using Square Wheels^®, that it is the best facilitation toolset in the world. One can use it to involve and engage people in designing workplace improvements and building engagement and collaboration. It is a unique metaphorical approach to performance improvement and we can easily license your organization to use these images and approaches.

By blending proven facilitation methods, creative problem-solving, and engaging team activities, my mission is to support organizations in building energized, sustainable cultures of involvement and innovation.

Through accessible — and often free — resources and virtual facilitation tools, I aim to help teams everywhere collaborate more effectively, innovate continuously, and take ownership of their improvement journey.

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